Bob and Annie

Bob and Annie had not known each other long before they became eager to get married: Bob because he wanted Annie and she (though she was fond of Bob in her own way) because she could at least lead a life away from her family. When Mrs. Thompson suggested that they marry and live with her in Dover Street until they could get a house of their own, Annie hesitated. Her idea of marriage had been something which brought her a husband and an orderly, well-furnished home all at once. But she soon saw the advantages of this arrangement. She would, first of all, escape from her present life into a house which was quiet and efficiently run, not like her own; and she would be able to go on working so that she and Bob could save up all the more quickly for their own house. She would also get Bob, a good enough husband for any working-class girl: good-natured and ready to be bent her way whenever it was necessary for her ends.

Things went well until her mother-in-law's death when Annie had to give up her job and was at home all day. Her father-in-law became just a silent figure in the house and although Bob became used to him, Annie began to find the old man's constant presence in the house a source of growing annoyance.

"He gets on my nerves, Bob," she said one night when they were alone. "Just sitting there all day and me having to clean up around him. And he hardly says a word from getting up in the morning to going to bed."

"Well, I suppose he has a right to do as he likes," Bob said mildly. "It's his house not ours. We're the lodgers, if anybody." But to Annie, now looking after the house as if it were her own, it was beginning to seem the other way about.